Ranked 93rd in the United States for its ratio of public restrooms to people, New York City simply does not have enough accessible toilets for its eight million residents. The consequence is that women, people of color, and working class folk, such as delivery people, are most vulnerable because they rely on the governmental provision of this public good. Although current analyses focus on political and urban design limitations influencing NYC’s public bathroom shortage, a philosophical approach including existentialist, critical race feminist, and historical perspectives can perhaps shine light on an overlooked root of this issue. Fundamentally, the shortage deals with people’s inability to carry out necessary bodily functions, and I assert that the problem relates directly to deeper historical issues in the Western conception of the body. Using Elizabeth Spelman’s concept of somatophobia, which she coins as the fear of and disdain for the body, my research answers the question: To what extent are historical and contemporary restroom conflicts real-life manifestations of somatophobia, and what do they elucidate about marginalized communities with regards to their associations with the body? 

My methodology is two-fold; on the one hand, I conduct a historical investigation not only into the philosophical debates surrounding the mind, body, and respective associations, but also into previous bathroom frictions, such as gender-segregated bathrooms starting in the 1800s and race-segregated bathrooms under Jim Crow. On the other hand, I also conduct a philosophical inquiry into the implications of restroom conflicts for women and people of color, respectively. I converge the results of both methodologies by considering the contemporary NYC public restroom shortage. Ultimately, I argue that restrooms have historically functioned as spaces through which somatophobia is manifested, as seen by gender and race segregated restrooms at different times in US history, particularly because restroom segregation communicates that the body has no part in real human agency and dignity, which contributes to the oppression of marginalized communities, namely women and people of color. Likewise, NYC’s public restroom shortage is also somatophobic because it too deals with threats to agency and dignity similar to the segregation of bathrooms, particularly when considering its primary victim: working class folks.